Possibly there is just bad optimization for newer AMD cards. Remember R9's have a new architecture too so it could be taking them a bit to figure out a better way to optimize for the newer gen cards. We could see something similar with the next Nvidia update too.
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Not even Death will save you from Diablo Bunny's Cuteness!
AKA you should play with Vsync anyway. As I've said before If you're able to hit 100FPS in a fight and you have a 60Hz monitor, which is what most people have, then Vsync is the best way to play. Sure it reduces framerate somewhat but If you can play without ever dipping below 60 the advantages outweigh the extra power needed. So you get 200-250 FPS in town but you only see 60 and if you see +60 then you're getting tearing which looks horrendous and is worse than being locked at 60FPS and have some more taxation on your GPU. And before all this if you hit +100 FPS constantly and +200 in town you will notice 0 difference. unless you lag spike during battle, or drop way below 60FPS. Because an eye can only discern 60 Frames in a second, some can better perceive 120 but once you pass through that 120 it's almost indiscernible anyway so a "technical" FPS drop of ~ 100 FPS from 250-150 isn't really an issue. In fact you'd see less tearing and therefore prbably enjoy the lower FPS more.
The only reason not to play with Vsync is it forces you to cut frames or its too taxing on your GPU, but lets face it 60FPS is enough and the cutting of frames means you had some to cut anyway. Even with a 120HZ monitor if you're getting 250 you'd see tearing a lot which is awful, vsync would lock you at 120 and allow dips, but you'd never see Tearing and you'd be able to see the image as intended.
This all become obsolete with the advent G-sync, and OLED's we won't need to worry about Vsync and tearing anymore but till its widespread and perfected expect to be unimpressed.
Really? I get 0 FPS drops with a AMD 6950 that has been playing games at max with power draw at +20% and bumped core and memory speeds and fan speeds at ~50% for more than two years now and I see 0 fps drops in Diablo 3 at any point. Hell I run Sc2 on Ultimate settings in 3v3's with max army value for all 6 players and see minimal fps dropping.and the fps drops only occur mid battle and even then its only maybe 10 fps... Seems odd that a 7800ti and an R9 270 would just get bad framerates... Maybe you guys got defective boards? I mean There really should be 0 reason for framerate issues with cards like you have.
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Not even Death will save you from Diablo Bunny's Cuteness!
Gsync will only be useful if you're afraid of ghosting and reducing FPS with Vsync. For now Vsync is working fine and TBH 120hz isn't all that amazing either. Some items get a "soap-opera" effect and the only real games with a significant benefit are FPS games. In an RTS like Sc2 or in a LoL game you don't need to pick up certain parts of your fast moving screen when moving cross map with your camera, the game does it for you with alerts. In DIablo it's even less useful considering you're camera is in a fixed state and your movement speed barely gets fast enough to motion blur and ghost the surroundings. I'll stick with my preferred panels based off black levels and color accuracy thank you very much. VA or IPS only, no more TN for me. And just one SSD? What are you guys behind the times? Three's a minimum!! I want 1TB SSDS in Raid 10 so I can boot in less than 5 and back it all up at the same time, too expensive right now though so I just run my three normally.
Back on topic slightly. Bleu is correct gurg0. The OS and any other background task his computer preforms eats at his allowance. Unless he feels like closing out every other program besides Diablo 3 He might need a slightly bigger buffer. I know right now I'm using 2.6 w/out any game or major tasks that I run. So I'm closing in on 4; and remember you never want to get too close to your overall buffer, things start to lag up even if you're using 3.6/4 GB of your RAM. Always give yourself some extra Headroom or you will see significant slowdowns even without maxing your RAM out. Thus why I have 16GB in my desktop. There's 0 way I'll ever hit my cap unless I Photoshop, and I stream my gaming sometimes so I'm definitely using a fair bit of it.
gurg0, to your problem did you uninstall the Nvidia driver? If not do so, I had a friend switch from Nvidia to AMD and he had issues cause we didn't uninstall the old driver. Another thing is check your settings and remember not to force AA or AF onto the game it significantly reduces performance. Also note the card you previously had was a DX 10 card the card you are using now is a DX11.2 Both of them are past Dx9 which is what Diablo 3 is, meaning that if you max the game with the old card and played perfectly fine, you'll see no discernible difference with the newer card. This because The old card was already better than normal Dx9 standard card and the newer cards won't do much to up performance in any Dx9 categories they'll only possibly gain a few frames.
Second check for Vsync. If you have it enabled, it caps your frames at whatever the refresh rate of your monitor is at. If you run a 60Hz monitor and you run Vsync it forces the game to play at 60FPS. Even if you're old card was producing 300FPS it would only output 60, if you're new card does 750FPS and you still have Vsync well you're still only going to see 60.
Next up is make sure your foreground and background FPS sliders are at 200. For some reason this game came with a FPS limiter so you could force the game to display less foreground FPS or less background FPS to enjoy your preference of what you want to be better displayed. But at standard settings it has your foreground limited to 60 i think and the background to like 100 or some stupid shit like that. This means the games settings are locking your frames at a certain rate which could be why you see no difference. In the end though you SHOULD play with Vsync. It makes tearing a non-issue and with your current GPU you won't even notice a hit. PLaying without Vsync will actually make your game loos worse as it will cause tearing in the image. If you don't know what image tearing is look it up, or play without Vsync on a good GPU you'll notice part of your screen (usually the bottom half) has a different frame then the other half. If you play on a normal TN monitor you can only see 60 Frames every second anyway unless you have a 120Hz or one of the 144Hz monitors. SO if you play on the 60Hz monitor all those extra frames actually fuck you over if you don't use Vsync.
As Bleu said, You're sort of SOL... Sorry. Laptops can't upgrade anything besides RAM, and even that is pretty limited usually only 2 So-DIMM ports, some only have 1. The best upgrade would be a graphics card, but sadly you aren't able to internally upgrade the GPU in any way that is normal. You'd have to make some mods to fit in a newer Mobile gpu probably and you'd have to somehow put in a new heatsink for the GPU considering your old one probably wouldn't even be able to cool 5 degrees off it. So count that out.
If your laptop is that old it may have a Mini-PCIE port in which case there are some cards that link to an external box that will house a desktop GPU that you can then use to view from a monitor, but they are pricey and shoddy at best.Thisis one such tool, but this requires a few things
A- a mini PCIE port
B- That adapter
C- A desktop GPU
D- a Monitor to output to
You're best bet if you can is buy a desktop or a better laptop. Either or should suffice. The desktop is the best option considering you can make it cheap and upgrade later, mix and match and really make it your own. And if you're overcome by the "building your own PC" thing don't worry shoot me a PM if you'd be into it as I've done it a few times before as some others on her have as well. It really isn't difficult It's like building Lego sort of.
The only reason not to play with Vsync is it forces you to cut frames or its too taxing on your GPU, but lets face it 60FPS is enough and the cutting of frames means you had some to cut anyway. Even with a 120HZ monitor if you're getting 250 you'd see tearing a lot which is awful, vsync would lock you at 120 and allow dips, but you'd never see Tearing and you'd be able to see the image as intended.
This all become obsolete with the advent G-sync, and OLED's we won't need to worry about Vsync and tearing anymore but till its widespread and perfected expect to be unimpressed.
Back on topic slightly. Bleu is correct gurg0. The OS and any other background task his computer preforms eats at his allowance. Unless he feels like closing out every other program besides Diablo 3 He might need a slightly bigger buffer. I know right now I'm using 2.6 w/out any game or major tasks that I run. So I'm closing in on 4; and remember you never want to get too close to your overall buffer, things start to lag up even if you're using 3.6/4 GB of your RAM. Always give yourself some extra Headroom or you will see significant slowdowns even without maxing your RAM out. Thus why I have 16GB in my desktop. There's 0 way I'll ever hit my cap unless I Photoshop, and I stream my gaming sometimes so I'm definitely using a fair bit of it.
gurg0, to your problem did you uninstall the Nvidia driver? If not do so, I had a friend switch from Nvidia to AMD and he had issues cause we didn't uninstall the old driver. Another thing is check your settings and remember not to force AA or AF onto the game it significantly reduces performance. Also note the card you previously had was a DX 10 card the card you are using now is a DX11.2 Both of them are past Dx9 which is what Diablo 3 is, meaning that if you max the game with the old card and played perfectly fine, you'll see no discernible difference with the newer card. This because The old card was already better than normal Dx9 standard card and the newer cards won't do much to up performance in any Dx9 categories they'll only possibly gain a few frames.
Second check for Vsync. If you have it enabled, it caps your frames at whatever the refresh rate of your monitor is at. If you run a 60Hz monitor and you run Vsync it forces the game to play at 60FPS. Even if you're old card was producing 300FPS it would only output 60, if you're new card does 750FPS and you still have Vsync well you're still only going to see 60.
Next up is make sure your foreground and background FPS sliders are at 200. For some reason this game came with a FPS limiter so you could force the game to display less foreground FPS or less background FPS to enjoy your preference of what you want to be better displayed. But at standard settings it has your foreground limited to 60 i think and the background to like 100 or some stupid shit like that. This means the games settings are locking your frames at a certain rate which could be why you see no difference.
In the end though you SHOULD play with Vsync. It makes tearing a non-issue and with your current GPU you won't even notice a hit. PLaying without Vsync will actually make your game loos worse as it will cause tearing in the image. If you don't know what image tearing is look it up, or play without Vsync on a good GPU you'll notice part of your screen (usually the bottom half) has a different frame then the other half. If you play on a normal TN monitor you can only see 60 Frames every second anyway unless you have a 120Hz or one of the 144Hz monitors. SO if you play on the 60Hz monitor all those extra frames actually fuck you over if you don't use Vsync.
If your laptop is that old it may have a Mini-PCIE port in which case there are some cards that link to an external box that will house a desktop GPU that you can then use to view from a monitor, but they are pricey and shoddy at best.Thisis one such tool, but this requires a few things
A- a mini PCIE port
B- That adapter
C- A desktop GPU
D- a Monitor to output to
You're best bet if you can is buy a desktop or a better laptop. Either or should suffice. The desktop is the best option considering you can make it cheap and upgrade later, mix and match and really make it your own. And if you're overcome by the "building your own PC" thing don't worry shoot me a PM if you'd be into it as I've done it a few times before as some others on her have as well. It really isn't difficult It's like building Lego sort of.
EDIT FOR GRAMMAR